Incertus

You'd think that with the meager amount of blogging I've been doing of late that I'd relish the chance for two separate blog posts, but no--I'm going to combine these two. First with the promotion: new poems in Measure (complete with author's photo and .mp3 of me reading the thing) and the Waccamaw Journal.

On to the picks--I went 8-5 last week, and the longer this season goes on, the more I'm convinced that my early success was just a fluke. I might as well flip coins for some of these games, I'm convinced. Here's how I think they'll go this week. Winners in all caps.

Washington at ATLANTA When the Falcons lost to the Saints last week, it was the first time in over a year that they'd lost two games in a row. I don't see much chance of them losing three in a row, even wth Washington coming off a bye week.

Kansas City at JACKSONVILLE I'm picking the Jaguars but with absolutely no confidence. They're the kind of team that makes picking games hard, because they're consistently inconsistent. They could win or lose this game by 30 and I wouldn't be surprised either way.

GREEN BAY at Tampa Bay I suppose Josh Freeman could have the luck of the rookie starter and Tampa could steal this game--Green Bay isn't as good as a lot of the preseason folks thought they would be, after all--but I think it's more likely Freeman will get pounded pretty hard.

Houston at INDIANAPOLIS The Colts, like the Saints, are almost certain to lose a game this season, and Houston is a better team than the one which drove me out of my game-picking mind early this season, but I still like the Colts in this game.

Arizona at CHICAGO Two deeply flawed, slightly better than average teams. Chicago's at home, so I'll pick them.

Baltimore at CINCINNATI When the Ravens beat the Broncos last week, the pundits were all talking about how the Ravens were desperate for a win and so played better. I've never bought into that notion--desperate teams play poorly and give up big plays because they're taking stupid risks. Baltimore was just the better team that day. Cincy is at home and they match up better with the weaknesses in the Baltimore defense. The over in this game might be 70.

Miami at NEW ENGLAND This is my "would love to be wrong" pick. New England is getting how, and Miami is young and improving. I wouldn't be surprised to see Miami win--they're certainly good enough to compete-but New England at home is a tough game in any circumstance.

Carolina at NEW ORLEANS Carolina has some sort of insane winning streak in the Superdome, and they played well against the Cardinals last week. The Saints should win handily, but it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't. Note to Stuart Scott of ESPN: after the Monday night game, you said Saints fans were chanting "who dey say they gonna beat them Saints?" "Who dey" is the chant of the illiterate Cincinnati Bengals fans. Illiterate Saints fans chant "who dat."*

Detroit at SEATTLE No matter who wins, football loses.

Tennessee at SAN FRANCISCO "A tale of two quarterbacks" is how this will probably be pitched to the seventeen people who watch the game.

San Diego at NY GIANTS This will also be a "tale of two quarterbacks" storyline, but more people will watch it because one of the QBs is named Manning.

Dallas at PHILADELPHIA Three weeks ago, I'd never have believed these two teams would be tied at the top of the NFC East. Dallas has gotten healthy of late on some weak competition, and Philly is at home, so I'm going with them.

Pittsburgh at DENVER Should be a good game in general. Denver's at home.

* Can you imagine the grammatical train wreck if the Saints and Bengals met in the Superbowl? I can see chant-offs, t-shirts, fisticuffs. Hmmmm.

Posted by Brian S at 9:02 AM | 0 comments    
Labels: football picks, Measure, shameless self-promotion, Waccamaw Journal

Last night, my friend from grad school Paul, a midwesterner who lived and worked in New York before taking his MFA and also a Yankees fan, tweeted the following: "will quietly accept that my team is reviled... and winning." I responded with "that's because Haterade is so delicious," and I think there's some truth to that, but I also think that there's more to it.

But I have to start by saying that I don't hate the Yankees--I don't feel much of anything for them, honestly. I don't carry the same passion for baseball that I do for football, and maybe even for NBA basketball. I expect a large part of that is disillusionment. Corporate baseball, which has been the model for most of my adult life, seems bent on two goals--soaking cities for all the revenue they can get, and...okay, one goal. Football has this goal as well, but their league model is a bit more socialistic on the revenue-sharing and player salary sides, so there's not as much disparity in free agent signings between small and large market teams.

If you're a baseball fan, you probably recognize where this is going, at least in part. Yankees hate is based, for many, on the notion that the Yankees, by virtue of their position as the primary team in the nation's largest city and television market, can always buy the best players and so will always factor in the championship discussion, even in the years when they don't win it. And that hate, especially if you're a small market team or if your local ownership group refuses to spend even the money it makes from revenue sharing on quality players (like the Florida Marlins, for example), has a legitimate basis, because here's your local team, sucking up valuable tax dollars (and they never generate as much as they take in--sorry) who, if they're going to win it all, has to put together a magical season to do it, while the Yankees can simply flash a bankroll and get stars to show up.

The funny part, of course, is that this is the first time since 2000 that the Yankees have won it all using that method. Other teams have done it as well--the Red Sox are no slouch in the spending department--but it's the Yankees who are reviled for it.

It's the fact that the Yankees are always in the discussion that engenders the hate--there's no similar hate for the Giants, Jets, Knicks, Islanders, Rangers or Mets, in large part because they all scuffle, some for longer periods than others--but the Yankees never do. There's this feeling that the Yankees never have to pay the full price for making a bad decision because they can always buy someone else's good eye for talent.

If only they'd go through a down period for a couple of years, we think--and by down year, we don't mean barely missing the playoffs. We mean losing 95 games. We mean being down by 15 at the All-Star break. We mean having one selection to the All-Star team, and that person getting the nod because there has to be a Yankees player on the team. If only--and this is the important part, I think--there could be a period where the discussion wasn't about them.

Because sports fans love a redemption story. We're suckers for the melodrama that sports can provide that fiction can't. There's no magic in a Yankees championship run because they're expected to be there every year.

But there's one other factor at play here--the sports media. And that was really driven home to me in 2000, which is where Paul comes back into this story. We were grad students, office-mates, first-year MFAs in northwest Arkansas, both adjusting to a new place. In my case, I was living in the largest city I'd been in since I was an infant--and that's saying something since Fayetteville was 60,000 people at the time--while Paul had moved in from New York (I believe)--a bit of culture shock for both of us, though undoubtedly more for him. As the baseball season drew to a close, Paul got more and more excited about the prospect of a subway series, and when I watched Baseball Tonight or SportsCenter, the talk was very much the same--Mets-Yankees all the time, and oh how amazing a Subway Series would be, et cetera.

I remember the day Paul told me how excited he was about the Series that year, and I think I shocked him with my reply. I said that baseball season was over, that New York had won. Admittedly, I was giving him a bit of the needle, because I knew he was a huge Yankees fan, but I really did believe that, because I didn't care about the differences between Yankees and Mets fans. It didn't matter to me.

And here's the really awesome thing about it--it didn't matter to the rest of the country either. Sportscasters were dumbfounded by the fact that tv ratings everywhere outside of New York were some of the lowest ever. It didn't matter to us--New York had won. For news media, New York is the goal--it's where you get to the top of your profession--so from that perspective, it makes perfect sense to be excited about a Subway Series. For the rest of us, meh.

The funny thing is that eventually, the Yankees will scuffle again. They have three certain future Hall-of-Famers on their roster right now in Rivera, Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, but those players are aging and will fall off, and there's no guarantee that they will be replaced with equal talent. My advice? Rebuild for a couple of years. Let the sheen wear off some. Stay down long enough for the rest of the country to see your return as a comeback story. We're sports fans. We're suckers for that stuff.

Posted by Brian S at 7:46 AM | 3 comments    
Labels: Haterade, New York Yankees

Let me be among the first to welcome you to the Sunshine State, where hopefully you will interfere just as effectively in next year's Senate race as you did in the NY-23 Congressional race.

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida. And in Florida, the conservative candidate is operating inside the GOP. If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, they better stand down.

I'm serious here--I want you to do to Charlie Crist what you did to Dede Scozzafava, and worse. I want you to crush him, to destroy him, to go scorched earth on him. I want you to try to make Marco Rubio the second coming of Jesus/Reagan/Glenn Beck, and pitch him as such. Let the Florida voters hear--in the general election campaign, of course--just what Rubio stands for. Have him be loud and proud and conservative as all hell. I'll even give you a place to stay while you're down here stumping in Broward County* on your mission to give the Democrats back the seat Mel Martinez won in 2004 when Democrats pulled something similar by submarining Janet Reno in the primary.

And a few months later, I'll be celebrating the election of Kendrick Meek to the US Senate. Come on down, y'all.


* I won't. But I can point you in the direction of a nice bridge or two to camp under.

Posted by Brian S at 10:41 AM | 1 comments    
Labels: Charlie Crist, Kendrick Meek, Marco Rubio, RedState, US Senate

Morning, everyone. The coffee's brewed, the cats are fed, and the pumpkins we carved last week are puddles of goo on the back porch, so I know what I'll be doing this afternoon. I was 9-4 last week, which puts me at 71-32 for the season. That's a little above average for this sort of thing, but not superior, which means I won't be heading to Vegas to make my living any time soon. Anyway, here are this weeks picks, winners in caps. Maybe I'll have one of those magical weeks where everything goes right. I'll buy a lottery ticket just in case.

Cleveland at CHICAGO Chicago reminds me of the Saints last year--solid enough to beat the teams they're supposed to beat, but not quite sure enough of themselves as a team with a passing game to win against good teams. Cleveland is not a good team.

DENVER at Baltimore At some point, Denver will lose a game, and when they do, I'll stop picking them to win every week--I've picked against them twice now and they've proven me wrong. I'll go with them as winners until I have reason otherwise.

St. Louis at DETROIT Who cares?

San Francisco at INDIANAPOLIS The Alex Smith/Michael Crabtree era begins in earnest in San Francisco. The Niners almost pulled off an impressive comeback last week, but I think the Colts will handle them.

Seattle at DALLAS Dallas may be the least convincing 4-2 team I've seen this year, and I really think it's a case of the Cowboys not living up to the impossible hype thrown at them because of the new stadium Ozymandias Jerry Jones built in honor of his ego. The Cowboys should win this game pretty easily.

HOUSTON at Buffalo This is not a pick that shows confidence in Houston--it's a pick that shows no confidence in Buffalo.

MIAMI at New York Jets If you only looked at last week's scores, you'd think the Jets are going to win this in a walk, and they still might, but the Fins played the Saints tighter than the score said, while the Jets beat the snot out of the Raiders. The Fins are probably still a year away from true contention, but their second-half schedule sets up nicely for a run, and it starts with this game.

NEW YORK GIANTS at Philadelphia Put me down as one who thinks Eli Manning is a tremendously overrated quarterback. He's a league-average QB who has a great name, plays in the biggest market around, and who got hot at the right time a couple of years ago. But he's no Payton. He's not even a Donovan McNabb. But the Giants are a better team right now, and that will be enough this week.

JACKSONVILLE at Tennessee Vince Young is in at QB for the Titans, which I thought should have happened a couple of weeks ago when it became clear they weren't going to do anything this season. I don't think much will change for the team, though Jacksonville is just inconsistent enough that a Tennessee win here wouldn't be a huge upset.

Oakland at SAN DIEGO The line on this game is something like 16.5 points. I've never seen a line that big for division rivals who are only a game and a half apart in the standings.

Carolina at ARIZONA Can't work up the energy to snark at either team.

MINNESOTA at Green Bay At least this part of the Brett Favre storyline will end once this game is over, because it's unlikely that the two teams will meet again in the playoffs.

Atlanta at NEW ORLEANS I'm doing my best to remain subdued here, but it's killing me that this game is on Monday, because I don't want to wait for it. I'm going to have to grade my ass off to be done in time for kickoff, but it will happen.

Posted by Brian S at 9:35 AM | 1 comments    
Labels: football picks, NFL

What else to say, really, about a person who claims to have been fired for wearing a pin which said "One nation under God" on his Home Depot work apron? Let's see how this really played out, shall we?

Earlier this month, he began bringing a Bible to read during his lunch break at the store in the rural town of Okeechobee, about 140 miles north of Miami. That's when he says The Home Depot management told him he would have to remove the button.

Keezer refused, and he was fired on Oct. 23, he said.

"It feels kind of like a punishment, like I was punished for just loving my country," Keezer said.

Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like Keezer is being treated unfairly. What's that?

A Home Depot spokesman said Keezer was fired because he violated the company's dress code.

Oh, so he isn't. He decided that his right to wear a particular pin superseded the store policy which said "only company-provided pins and badges can be worn on our aprons."

It gets better.

Fishel said Keezer was offered a company-approved pin that said, "United We Stand," but he declined.

Oh, so Keezer had a chance to keep his job, and was even given another pin to choose from, but decided not to take it. I don't call that being fired; I call that quitting. If my employers decide it's a condition of my employment that I wear a necktie (please don't ever do this to me, okay?) every day, then I can either wear a necktie or I can lose my job. That's the way it works.

Here's the payoff line, though. "Keezer said he was working at the store to earn money for college." Might want to work on those critical thinking skills while you're hunting for another job. And don't expect much out of that lawsuit either. A blanket policy like Home Depot's is pretty hard to touch.

Posted by Brian S at 5:00 PM | 4 comments    

Guest blogger Amy here, writing to weigh in on the recent ascent of Seth Abramson's impressive and long-labored MFA rankings to the P&W throne: if you hadn't heard, Seth Abramson, poet and blogger, recently had his MFA rankings (which have been up and available and thoroughly explained on his website for years) adopted by Poets & Writers, a magazine, organization, and all around powerhouse of influence and resource among writers.

Posted by Amy at 10:14 AM | 2 comments    
Labels: MFA programs, poets and writers, seth abramson, University of Arkansas

The news hit a few weeks ago--Marge Simpson would be on the cover of the November issue of Playboy. And she is, well, on some of them, anyway--Alina Puscau is on the rest, though Marge gets the centerfold section in all of them. Some commentators have wondered about the choice, from both sides. Why would The Simpsons, which satirizes the patriarchal world Playboy celebrates, put Marge in this situation? Why would Playboy think this a good marketing strategy toward twenty-somethings who haven't found The Simpson family edgy, well, ever?

Sarah Churchwell, writing in The Guardian attempts to answer the first question.

If The Simpsons occasionally lampoons feminism, however, it much more frequently satirises the objectification of women for commercial purposes: in one episode Marge and Lisa watch a television ad in which a man at a petrol station is approached by three scantily dressed sexy young women, strutting to pop music; one of them leans over to reveal a cross dangling in her cleavage, and a voiceover intones: "The Catholic church. We've made a few … changes."

Playboy is trying to claim the same thing in promising to reveal the devil in Marge Simpson. But Marge has been showing her devilish side for years. When she shut down the Maison Derrière, she warned Belle, its proprietor, that she was about to learn that "the two most dangerous words in the English language are 'Marge Simpson". And, actually, in 2004 Marge was featured on the cover of Maxim – in a negligee, on all fours, scrubbing the floor – so it's hard to conclude that she's letting the sisterhood particularly down by appearing in Playboy.

If Marge has always been a figure for sending up cultural questions about women's roles, then one could argue there is nowhere more appropriate for her to end up than on the cover of Playboy, the magazine that emerged in the very era – the American 1950s – that The Simpsons was born to burlesque. Playboy represented the flipside of that fantasy of domestic stability: instead, the magazine offered a sentimental fantasy of sanitised promiscuity. And of course Hefner has long been nothing if not a cartoon himself, a smirking parody of the vacuous consumption and mindless sexualisation he promulgated.

This, of course, is only a small snippet--the whole thing is worth reading. I don't have an answer for the second question I posted above, and neither does Churchwell. The notion that a Marge Simpson cover is going to pull in twenty-something readers is, well, ridiculous. It seems like a scene out of Mad Men where a bunch of middle-aged white men are trying to figure out what will sell to housewives, only with young adults as the pitchees this time. "The Simpsons--that's still edgy, right? The kids love edgy!" And Playboy has done this a lot recently, with "spreads" of women characters from video games and the like--although those made sense for the Playboy aesthetic, given their absurd dimensions and featureless faces. Whatever the reason, if the idea was to pull in twenty-somethings, it was a bad idea--maybe forty-somethings would be intrigued by it enough to buy a copy, but I'd be surprised if they see much of a bump at all.

Posted by Brian S at 8:36 AM | 0 comments    
Labels: feminism, The Simpsons